Plzen, CZ

This water tower is part of the original Plzensky Prazdroj Pivovar (brewery) in Plzen, home to the world's first Pilsener beer, Pilsener Urquell, invented in 1842 with the construction of the brewery.

Here's a general view of the Plzensky Prazdroj Pivovar, built (mostly) in 1842-1900 or so.

In the old days, Plzensky Prazdroj had its own industrial railway, and the equipment is still there on display. The designs of the equipment are noticably Czech/Austrian, although I don't know a lot about all of it.

Real proper breweries, regardless of age, brew their beer in copper kettles, and that naturally includes Plzensky Prazdroj. I was amazed that I got this photo to come out at all, since I shot it with 100 ISO Fomapan shot through an Ikoflex, using a bad light meter.

This is the Renaissance Town Hall of Plzen, but I shot this as a closeup in this way, or at least a crop, to get some of the artwork on it, called, misleadingly, grafitti. Don't mess with this building, a---holes. In any case, I wish the photo looked better, but the scan was horrible, I think because the exposure was too dark....yet again.

This is St. Bartholomew's Cathedral in Plzen, built roughly between the years 1295-1500. It's still in good shape, and has the highest spire in the Czech Republic, at 102.3 meters. The building overall is the third tallest in the Czech Republic, and until 1981 it was the very tallest. Now the tallest, if I'm not mistaken, is the Zizkov TV tower in Prague at 213 meters, but to put things in perspective, the observation tower on the TV tower is only 100 meters off the ground.....wow. This cathedral is therefore immense, far larger than it even looks!

This synagogue, constructed in 1888-1893, is one of the largest in the world, third largest according to the sources I could find. Designed by architect Emmanuel Klotz after an earlier architect named Fleichmann's design was declared too big by city interests (or possibly just bigots), its combination of architectural styles and its overall quality all contribute to making it one of the most desirable ones to visit, too. Those two towers are, incidentally, 65 meters high, and unlike on the cathedral the immense dimensions of this building are obvious. In addition to religious services (there were none from 1973-1998, but now it's supposedly open for religious purposes again), the synagogue also hosts concerts and exhibitions, and not always on religious subjects, either. It's actually quite a hard subject to photograph, as I've done it several times and getting the light right is quite challenging, as you can see that even here much of it is in shadow. I was only going to be in the city a few hours, so I couldn't wait for better light, unfortunately.

This was a lucky shot that I got coming back to Prague through Plzen.

This is arguably the most famous brewery in the Czech Republic, and I have other, better pictures of it elsewhere. It was here in 1842 that the original Pilsner Urquell beer was brewed, which is still the brewery's main product. On this occasion, we went on the tour, which was interesting as usual, but it was a new version of the tour including both some of the modern 2000's-era production lines, as well as a full tour of the now-deactivated late-19th Century brewhouse. The photo looks black and white because the weather was really gloomy, but it's actually a color cameraphone shot.